SummaryA group of high-schoolers invite Mandy Lane, a good girl who became quite hot over the summer, to a weekend party on a secluded ranch. While the festivities rage on, the number of revelers begins to drop quite mysteriously.
SummaryA group of high-schoolers invite Mandy Lane, a good girl who became quite hot over the summer, to a weekend party on a secluded ranch. While the festivities rage on, the number of revelers begins to drop quite mysteriously.
I just recently watched this genre-defying (or subversive, if you will) cult classic and I have to say that I'd rate it among the most underrated slasher/psycho-thriller/mystery thriller/teen horror movies of all time. I mean, there's so much to like about this The-Virgin-Suicides-meets-Texas-Chainsaw-Massacre movie but almost nothing to hate about it.
For instance, Amber Heard alone and her outstanding performance are a huge and singular reason to love this movie and rate it way above average. Her delicate balancing act between 'shy, naïve, and reserved' and 'stoic, smart, and powerful' in Mandy Lane's persona is quite frankly award-worthy. As so is the beauty and air of mystery that she imbues the movie with from beginning to end.
Another plus for the movie is its subversion of common slasher horror tropes (plenty of examples in other reviews of the movie so I won't list them here). The movie's exploration of common school and teen social problems in the US like school shootings, body image issues, sexist stereotypes and gender-based double standards, and suicide in an entertaining yet memorable and serious way is also commendable.
Its setting, cinematography, editing, sound, and costumes are also praiseworthy in their own rights. Also praiseworthy is its gender and racial representation. The only problem that I noted with the movie is there being several continuity errors that, nevertheless, do not substract anything from its appeal. Finally, notice how Jacob Forman (writer) and Jonathan Levine's (director) creativity shows in, for example, their subtle inclusion of elements in the movie that build Emmet's character (played by Michael Welch) around one of the Columbine High School shooters. It baffles me how most people seem to miss this after they've watched the movie.
I'd recommend this movie to all horror fans and every other person that loves a good teen or psycho-thriller or mystery movie. I'd also recommend it to Amber Heard fans because her lead actress debut performance in this movie demonstrates why she's the A-list actress that she is.
I waited forever to find this movie, and I'm so glad I did, it was a great flick with the ever so beautiful "Amber Heard" as the lead, and she does an amazing job. While this movie kind of borders on the edge of becoming just another teen slasher, but it never quite falls down to that point which is a good thing. The best touch of all was the great ending. Definitely glad I hunted this one down to add to my movie collection.
It clearly aspires to be something more than another story about empty-headed teenagers in a remote cabin who get picked off one by one in gruesome fashion — but at the end of the day, that’s pretty much what we’re getting.
Mandy Lane does eventually build to a whiplash twist ending, but it's too little, too late — much like the film itself. Here's a case where the backstory is more interesting than the movie.
Subversive and winning, it took ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE seven years to get released but it was well worth the wait. This amoral film turns elements of horror inside out while depicting a particularly relevant and contemporary view of teenage sexuality. The image of boys, girls, men and women all leering at the gorgeous and perfect Mandy Lane is a repugnant dismissal of our obsession with youth and beauty the our wish to deflower that perfection. ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE is an exciting and insightful film that is quite beautifully directed and shot. A wonderful surprise. Bravo!
Although a fan of the genre I didn't enjoy this movie. Amber Heard plays the part very well but something seem to be lacking and it becomes just another slasher movie with a bit of a twist.
There are moments in the adolescence when a boy gets so infatuated by a girl that it seems he has never seen a woman in his life, but there are girls who know how to take advantage of it. This is, roughly, the theme of this film, where a teenager girl seduces several boys with rather dubious intentions. Nothing new, therefore. It's just another teen movie, full of sexual cues (direct or veiled), violence and stereotypical characters that exist only to die. What I don't understand is why Mandy Lane appears as an irresistible and seductive woman when, in fact, she is just a girl who loves to tease the boys. Do boys love being treated like idiots? The movie tries to surprise at the end with a plot twist, but the attentive viewer already foresaw it for some time. Amber Heard is excellent at her character and could have done better if she had received more dense and consistent material to work with. The rest of the cast is on the borderline between the acceptable and the mediocre. This film lacked a better development of the plot and the characters, so it all seems a bit meaningless.
Before you can even say "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane", the film falls sharply into the pitfalls of horror clichés, and never recovers. It is a catalogue of bad actors reading from a bad script, performing formulaic death scenes. The more I watched, the more frustrated I became with the film, and I became even more frustrated with the modern-day horror genre as a whole.
The film conforms to the usual dull premise of any other horror film or slasher flick: a bunch of drugged-up, alcoholic, sex-obsessed sluts and ****, with occasionally one withdrawn character - usually and in this case female - who becomes the focal point of the piece. Each of the other characters are picked off one at a time. I mean, surely this isn't meant to be scary. We aren't supposed to feel sympathy for the characters. The film is designed in order to give the audience a big cheer when one of the sluts or **** meets his or her well-deserved demise. If the film was truly scary, it would feature well-meaning, innocent humans to whom bad things happen. But no, we have to sit and watch completely unlikeable people, whose stupidity and unpleasantness leads them to an end that nobody even cares about. What's the point?
On the somewhat positive side, this films offers an interesting twist towards the end of the film, before taking it one twist too far and driving the script back into nonsense, and the scenery certainly is beautiful. But that's it. And trust me, these two positives pale significantly in comparison to the vast list of negatives. Don't watch it.